1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a liquid crystal display, and more particularly, to a vertically aligned liquid crystal display having a pixel divided into a plurality of domains.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is a widely used flat panel display. An LCD can include two substrates comprising field-generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode and a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed therebetween. The LCD displays images by applying voltages to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the LC layer, which determines orientations of LC molecules in the LC layer to adjust polarization of incident light.
A vertical alignment (VA) mode LCD, which aligns LC molecules such that the long axes of the LC molecules are perpendicular to the substrates in the absence of an electric field, has a high contrast ratio and a wide reference viewing angle. The reference viewing angle is defined as a viewing angle making the contrast ratio equal to 1:10 or as a limit angle for the inversion in luminance between the grays.
A wide viewing angle of the VA mode LCD can be realized by, for example, cutouts in the field-generating electrodes and protrusions on the field-generating electrodes. The cutouts and the protrusions can determine the tilt directions of the LC molecules. The tilt directions can be distributed into several directions by using the cutouts and the protrusions such that the reference viewing angle can be widened.
In a conventional LCD, a wide viewing angle can be achieved by arranging LC molecules in units of domains using domain dividing means such as, for example, cutouts and protrusions. However, data lines disposed in the vicinity of a pixel electrode and extending in a longitudinal direction may not coincide with the tilt directions of the LC molecules, which may cause textures to the data lines, resulting in light leakage.